


Confession

by last_illusions (injured_eternity)



Category: CSI: NY
Genre: Episode Tag, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2008-11-18
Updated: 2008-11-18
Packaged: 2017-10-17 09:24:48
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,099
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/175348
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/injured_eternity/pseuds/last_illusions
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When he got upset, his accent made him harder to understand than <i>Danny</i>. Angsty Flack/Angell with some fluffy elements.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Confession

**Author's Note:**

> Spoilers: 5x07 [“Dead Inside”]
> 
> Don’s history is purely my own and fully explained in my season-two follow-up, [To Trigger the Bleeding](http://archiveofourown.org/works/175342/chapters/257488). You do not need to have read that for this to make sense, but the details are there, if you would like his backstory in my “universe”, as it were.

Detective Jessica Angell put down the book she wasn’t really reading to pick up her cell phone, staring indecisively at the screen for the umpteenth time since she’d gotten home. Fingers hovering over her third speed dial, she was on the verge of giving in and pressing the damn thing when her buzzer went off.

Jumping slightly, she glanced at the clock—her delivery was a touch early—and made her way to the door. “Yeah.”

“It’s me.”

“And there I thought dinner had arrived early,” she teased before releasing the front doors.

She’d been mentally pacing all night, wondering if Don was all right, if he’d been mugged on his way home, if she should call him—all while studiously telling herself she wasn’t worried about him in the slightest. Half an hour ago, she’d given in to the reminder that she hadn’t eaten all day and ordered a pizza. In the hopes she might telepathically be able to get Don’s attention over some vague psychic channel, she’d ordered his favourite, even though before she’d met him she’d never have considered putting anchovies on her pizza. Faint chance though it may have been, it had worked. Or it was just coincidence, but whatever the reason, she didn’t really care… she just didn’t have the pizza yet.

She heard footsteps in the hall, thinking she recognised his tread, but she waited for the knock before she opened the door. A slow smile spread across her face as she let him in, remarking drily, “I guess dinner really _did_ show early.” She paused, then added, “Though I should sue the delivery boy for handing it off to some stranger.”

Don chuckled low in his throat, a sound that never ceased to send shivers down her spine. “Nah. He wasn’t goin’ to; I flashed my badge at him.”

Gesturing him into the living room, she flashed a grin over her shoulder. “What was that about taking advantage of the shield?”

It was the wrong thing to say, today of all days, and she knew it the minute the words left her mouth—would have known it even if Don hadn’t looked like he’d been slapped full across the face. Flinching, she took the box from him, setting it on the table and reaching up to place her hands on his elbows, bracing him.

“I’m sorry, Don. That was… I shouldn’t have—”

“It’s okay, Jess,” he interrupted her. “I know.”

She hesitated, debating saying more, then talked herself out of it. He’d breach the subject if he wanted to, and pushing would do neither of them any favours. “Can I get you something to drink?” she offered finally. “Water? Beer? Something stronger?”

“No!” It was sharp, forceful—panicked?—and so unlike Don that she backed up half a step, and then it was his turn to apologise.

“I’m sorry, Jess. I just… water’s fine.”

Forcing herself to take that at face value, she nodded and turned to the kitchen, returning a few minutes later with two glasses of water, two plates, and a handful of napkins (she hadn’t spent three years putting herself through university as a waitress for nothing). Don had seated himself on the couch, turned the television on in the background, and flipped the pizza box open, so when she came up beside him and set things on the coffee table, he turned to her with a mildly bemused expression.

“I thought you didn’t like anchovies.”

A slightly sheepish smile turned up the corners of her mouth. She couldn’t think of a decent cover story, so she admitted, “I was kind of hoping you’d drop by…”

His answering smile was bright with genuine pleasure, a stark contrast from the subdued contemplation and forced calm of earlier that night, and it struck her again how the littlest things could make him happy. She sank down beside him, letting herself relax for the first time that night, and he rather chivalrously handed her a plate before getting one himself.

Tucking her legs up under her, she leaned back against the cushions with a low sigh, trying not to burn herself on the slice of pizza and hiding a smile as Don did the same. He didn’t seem to find words necessary, so she was content to study him. The lines of his shoulders were still too tight—tensed, like he was bracing himself for a blow that hadn’t yet come—and his hands on the plate were perhaps just a touch too firm.

By the time they—or rather, he—had polished the majority of the pizza, the tension still hadn’t left, so she broke the silence, offering softly, “You want to talk about it?”

He cast her a sidelong look, blue eyes wary in spite of himself, and shrugged noncommittally.

“I… ‘M fine, Jess,” he tried to tell her, but the thickening of his accent belied the truth—when he got upset, he was harder to understand than Danny.

“Like moldy bread,” she muttered under her breath, surprising a half-laugh from him.

It was something he’d mentioned in passing one day, and when she’d stared at him like he’d grown an extra head, he’d laughed and explained that his mother used to say that all the time when he was growing up. Unlike her husband, Elise Flack had been firmly of the mind that her children shouldn’t have to bear their worlds alone. Every time one of them came home on the verge of either tears or putting a fist through the wall and still tried to tell her they were “fine”, she’d toss back, “Like moldy bread,” offering milk, cookies, and the panacea of mother’s love.

Watching the rather defensive, guarded man Don Flack had grown into, Jessica had adopted the phrase, thinking that occasionally letting his defences down would be good for him. It had been hesitant at first, for she’d been afraid of offending him or bringing back bad memories, but the first time he heard her say it, he’d frozen in his tracks, turned to her with the most open smile she’d ever seen him wear, and thrown his arms around her. Since then, she’d added the phrase to the arsenal of things she was building for the occasions when she needed to [verbally] beat him into seeing reason.

But he was staring at the water in his glass, silent again, and she was about to stand and take things to the kitchen when he murmured, half to himself, “It was AA.”

For a long minute, he didn’t say anything else, but she didn’t dare push him further even though she wasn’t sure she’d heard him correctly. Then he set the glass down on the table, bracing his elbows on his knees and primarily addressing the floor as he continued, “She went t’ an AA meetin’. Called ‘erself th’ only screw-up ‘n a perfect fam’ly.”

The words were almost muffled, missing half their syllables, and his voice broke on the last one. She could see him visibly catch himself, pulling himself resolutely back up on the rope of his father’s unforgiving training, and she scooted closer, putting them shoulder-to-shoulder and mirroring his position as she slipped her left hand between his arm and his side, lacing her fingers with his.

“I… I couldn’ make m’self go ‘n. I shoulda—I shoulda… said somethin’, done somethin’… I shoulda known b’fore… she wasn’ _right_ … I shoulda helped ‘er.”

“What could you have, Don?” she asked, levelling her tone with his, and he shrugged—not knowing _what_ he would have done didn’t abrogate the belief that he _should_ have done something.

He fell back into silence, tracing patterns on the back of her hand. “She took… Ma’s suicide hit ‘er hard,” he finally told her, eyes focussed resolutely on the floor, and she fought to hide her surprise.

She’d known his mother had died when he was a teenager—anyone with access to his files would know that—but she’d never heard details. With his father’s position in the department, that was hardly surprising, but the knowledge hit her like a sledgehammer on freefall, suddenly offering explanations for… so, so much.

“I thought m’be she’d bounce back, y’know? Then Dad wanted nothin’ t’ do wi’ her, and she—she fuckin’ dis’pears for a couple years. Now she’s back ‘n she’s more batshit ‘n she was when she left.”

There was anger in his voice now, and he pulled away from her, rising to pace the floor. “We promised,” he declared emphatically, the words almost a curse, and he stopped moving as suddenly as he’d started, turning to meet her eyes for the first time that night. “W’ promised, ‘s kids, we’d never drink like my ol’ man. What th’ ‘ell’s she doin’?”

His eyes were haunted—clouded—in direct contrast with the miserable fury she heard in his voice, but still pleading with her for answers she didn’t have, and she spread her hands in helpless supplication.

“You know it’s not rational, Don,” she reminded him carefully. “She… she’s not doing this to _you_.” Running her hands through her hair, she sighed. “But she’ll be okay—she’s fighting on her own.”

“You don’t _know_ that!” he almost shouted, needing something on which he could focus his anger and choosing her words as his target. “She’s my sister!”

Green eyes flashed, and she stood, arms crossed over her chest. “And I don’t?” she countered with a raised brow. “You think I had my father institutionalised for _fun_? You think I don’t know that sometimes the help does what it’s supposed to?”

She could see him almost visibly deflate, shoulders slumping slightly. When a bad case with a schizophrenic had come up a few weeks ago, he’d found out that, despite fervent, blind denial from her mother, she’d called the authorities on her father the day she turned eighteen. She was leaving for college, her mother had spent five years refusing to admit that something had changed in the man she’d married, and there was no way Jessica was leaving him to get himself in trouble. Now, despite obvious improvement in her husband, Leslie Angell still hated her daughter, and Jessica hadn’t bothered going home more than once in the past ten years.

“ ‘M sorry,” he apologised for the second time that night. “Thas… thas not what I meant. I jus’—I didn’ do anythin’… She—she thinks no one cares. How c’n I tell ‘er thas not even true?”

Heaving another sigh, she moved toward him. “You go talk to her, Don. You listen. You’re not a shrink, so you do what you can.”

Stopping in front of him, she opened her arms in a silent offer, and he stepped forward, wrapping her in his and burying his face in her shoulder. He wasn’t crying—she would bet good money that Flack Sr. had beat that ability out of his son at some point—but he wasn’t steady, either. They stood there for long minutes as she ran her hands in aimless patterns across his back, and when he finally pulled back, at least his eyes were clear. Bracing his forehead against hers, he closed his eyes and drew in a deep breath.

“Better?” she asked softly, and he nodded slowly.

“Thank you.”

“Always,” she answered, rising up on her toes slightly to kiss his cheek, but when she moved to pull away, he held her in place.

The kiss was deep, slow, lacking the desperation she’d halfway expected. One hand was caught in her hair, the other resting on her hip, and she reached around him, linking her own at the small of his back. When the hand on her hip slid up under the hem of her shirt to bare skin, she didn’t flinch, and when they came up for air, he didn’t let go.

“ ‘M… ‘m not usin’ you, Jess,” he started, trying to reassure her about something she hadn’t even considered. “I jus’—”

“I know,” she interrupted gently. She knew the feeling, and if she was the one he wanted to convince him that not everything in the world hurt, she was more than happy to oblige.

After a moment spent searching her eyes, he finally nodded, but when he moved back in to kiss her again, she stopped him. “But my floor isn’t that comfortable.”

Surprised, he pulled back, staring. Then a slow smile spread across his face, and even though the shadows hadn’t disappeared, the smile at least was still genuine.

“Suggestions?”

“One,” she answered, and took his hand.

  
 _Finis._

 _Feedback is always appreciated._


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